Inspiration?

So, put bluntly, this blog died. Opps…

I convinced myself I wasn’t ready to maintain a blog I really wanted everyone to see and, more importantly, I wanted to let recruiters/potential employees to look at. I told myself I “just really didn’t have the time” to make Converged Life “presentable.” But I’m calling bullshit on myself.

I blog all the time! I blog for my sorority (not embarrassed, we have an awesome blog with multimedia and some great posts) and for my J-School classes (they are simple weekly blogs, but I enjoy keeping them even if it’s just to show my teachers I am doing an assignment). I even run the website for my soccer team! But for some reason, at the beginning of this school year, I convinced myself that the ‘unveil’ of Converged Life needed to be stopped and put off for awhile.

I am over that idea now and ready to really put some effort into keeping this blog. I am going to lighten it up, make it more enjoyable and less “journalism” focused. I may comment about J-School life and issues in journalism, but I will be bringing a lot more entertainment and “fun” content in as well.

What brought on this sudden change you ask? Well a good friend of mine who I talk to on the “check out this awesome social media site” level and the “Piano Bar was packed last night” level, wrote this ‘advice’ to college kids column. Check it out at daniellesotherblog and see what her recommendations were about the way to get though college. Maybe you too will get inspired to do something…

Blue fish.

Today I created a new blog header – a task that should take five minutes of my time but always somehow transports me into a time warp, one that ends three hours and five new photoshopped images later. I thought I would explain a little about the new header because it gives a little insight into me.

When I was in middle school I started ripping advertisements out of magazines; things I felt were creative, or unique, or simply just visually appealing. My parents weren’t too thrilled when they started noticing full pages of articles missing – thanks to a little white lie about an art project (which they clearly saw right through) they let my hoarding of advertisements continue. I still remember finding one print ad while skimming through a TIME magazine. The ad was a simple white background with rows of orange goldfish swimming in one direction. In the middle of all the rows was one lonely goldfish swimming the wrong way. Next to the fish was black type spelling “life”. To this day I still can’t get this ad out of my head, it was just the perfect visual statement of “life”. It screamed that somehow in all of the chaos you have to be the one fish to swim the wrong way – stand out – cause a scene, in order to make a difference and get noticed. 

So maybe that is my challenged, to do things that get noticed (positively) – to be the blue fish of my blog header.

Away we go…

My name is Amanda Klohmann and I am a Journalism student at the University of Missouri. I am focusing on Convergence journalism and in search of opportunities that will expand my knowledge and skill as a convergence journalism major and social media lover.

Converged is my way of showing you what I can do. Stuck in mid-Missouri (by choice of course), Converged is my form of self-promotion and my window to a world of media beyond campus grounds.

On Converged you will find this front page blog. This blog has a rolling account of my published works, current projects and critiques of journalism topics.

You will also find a resume page. The resume shares all of my journalism related experiences as well as details about my education and involvement with campus and off-campus organizations. There is a lot of information because there is a lot to learn about me.

Besides the resume page I have also included 3 pages featuring work from my journalism portfolio – Radio, Video/TV and Print/Online. I have a pretty big variety of articles, television packages, and photographs to show after three years of completely miscellaneous work at internships and in journalism school so I thought I would divide it up a bit and let you choose wat media you would like to look at.

Also, I have included a page specifically about me. This page gives you about 50 ways to stalk me- just a heads up, the most reliable are twitter and facebook. Be my friend… please!